Download speed

C5 cameras are equipped with on-board RAM, capable to hold several full-resolution frames. Downloading of the image to the host computer thus does not influence image digitization process, as the download only transfers already digitized images from camera memory.

Time needed to digitize and download single full frame depends on USB connection type.

If only a sub-frame is read, time needed to digitize and download image is naturally lower. However, the download time is not cut proportionally to number of pixels thanks to some fixed overhead time, independent on the sub-frame dimensions.

C5 camera electronics supports in-camera 2 × 2 binning. If this binning mode is used, download speed increases because of less amount of data read from camera.

Download speed when using the Moravian Camera Ethernet Adapter depends if the 100 Mbps or 1 Gbps Ethernet is used, if USB 2 or USB 3 is used to connect camera to Ethernet Adapter device, but also depends on the particular network utilization etc. When the camera is connected to the Ethernet Adapter using USB 3 and 1 Gbps Ethernet is directly connected to the host PC, download time of the C3-61000 full frame is approx. 2.5 s.

Camera gain

Sensors used in C3 cameras offer programmable gain from 0 to 36 dB, which translates to the output signal multiplication from 1× to 63×.

Camera driver accepts gain as a number in the range 0 to 4030, which corresponds directly to sensor register value. This number does not represent gain in dB nor it is an exact gain multiply. However, the driver offers a function, which transforms the gain numerical value to gain expressed in dB as well as multiply. Some selected values are shown in the table:

Conversion factors and read noise

Generally, many sensor characteristics depend on the used gain. Also, the used sensors employ two conversion paths. One path offers very low read noise, but cannot utilize full sensor dynamic range. Another conversion path offers maximum pixel capacity, but at the price of higher read noise. The cross point is set to gain 3× (approx. 10 dB), where the full well capacity drops from more than 50 ke- to ~17 ke-. The read noise then drops from ~3.2 e- RMS to ~1.5 e- RMS.

Sensor dynamic range, defined as full well capacity divided by read noise, is greatest when using gain 0, despite somewhat higher read noise:

• At gain = 0, dynamic range is 50,000 / 3.52 = 14,205×
• At gain = 2750, dynamic range is 16,500 / 1.51 = 10,927×

Also, it is worth noting that in reality the noise floor is only rarely defined by read noise. Unless the camera is used with very narrow narrow-band filter (with FWHM only a few nm) and under very dark sky, the dominant source of noise is the sky glow. When the noise generated by sky glow exceeds approximately 4 e- RMS, extremely low read noise associated with gain set to 2750 or more is not utilized and dynamic range is unnecessarily limited by the lowered full well capacity.

So, which gain settings is the best? This depends on the particular task.

• Gain set to 2750 can be utilized if imaging through narrow-band filter with appropriately short exposures, so the background noise does not exceed the read noise. This is typical for aesthetic astro-photography, where the lowered full well capacity does not negatively influence the result quality.
• But even without narrow-band filters, the extremely low read noise allows stacking of many short exposures without unacceptable increase of the stacked image background noise, caused by accumulation of high read noise of individual exposures.
• Gain set to 0 offers maximum full well capacity and the greatest sensor dynamic range, which is appreciated mainly in research applications. Pass-bands of filters used for photometry are relatively wide and dominant source of noise is the sky glow.
• But also for RGB images, used for aesthetic astro-photography, higher dynamic range allows longer exposures while the bright portions of the nebulae and galaxies still remain under saturation limit and thus can be properly processed.